Patience. All will be revealed in good time. If the bandwidth budget holds...

First off, I believe I can lay claim to being the smallest deployed Task Force in the Army. Nope, not "in the smallest Task Force" -- I *am* the smallest Task Force. Y'see, my 'Structor Pilot gig is supporting a Joint Mission. It falls under DoS, the USAF is the Service Lead and the Army was tasked with providing the expertise for the Rotary-Wing portion. When I got here back in December for the site survey, I got a scorecard, met the management, the coaches and the players -- and any time there's an Army side to a mission that doesn't require employing a "normal" unit, the Army tailors a Task Force (usually smaller than needed, but they're getting better at it) to accomplish the Army side.

"Yeah, yeah, I've read history -- get to the *cats*!"

Re. Lax.

As I was saying, the Army drops the Task Force where it's needed, but in order to identify it (because it's an ad hoc organization, after all), the Task Force usually receives a name, rather than a numerical designator (yeah, I know about TF 160 -- different ballgame altogether). When I met the Army IPs, they figured it was only right that I be brought into the Task Force -- I am, after all, a retired *Army* aviator. So, I learned the seekrit password, the seekrit way to hold the coffee mug and got the official TF patch.

When I got here last month, the Army IPs left on the C-130 that brought me here -- we high-fived each other when we passed on the ramp.

I'm the only one over here, hence my claim to being the smallest deployed Task Force in the Army.

"The cats! What about the *cats*, you addlepated--"

Heh. Remember I told you that Task Forces were *named*? Well, "Army Air Expeditionary Advisory Group" proved a tad cumbersome, so the semi-official title became TF Wildcat.

Toldja I got the patch.

Keep the comments PG...